“Do you think this means we’ll have a mild winter?”
Weather discussions were easy and, if you encouraged them even the slightest bit, could fill hours of time. We didn’t require hours, but I did see a need to distract Leese from what lay across the parking lot for a little while.
One of the downsides about living in a rural area was the time it could take for emergency vehicles to respond. Thanks to my boyfriend, Ash Wolverson, a deputy with the Tonedagana County Sheriff’s Office, I knew where the sheriff’s satellite offices and the local fire and EMS stations were located, which was why I knew it would take at least fifteen minutes for anyone to get to us. We were in the far northeast part of the county, the least populated part with the least amount of emergency services, and even law enforcement can drive only so fast.
So Leese and I chatted about the weather and talked about the advantages of snow tires. I’d just started to edge into asking tentative questions about her father when an ambulance rolled up.
We stood as two EMTs got out of the vehicle. The driver, a blond woman in her forties, glanced from Leese to me to the bookmobile and back to Leese. “We got a report of a—”
“Over there,” I interrupted, not wanting to hear the words she was about to say. “In the bed of the truck.”
They nodded and moved away, and as they were pulling back the tarp, a police car pulled into the parking lot and a deputy I didn’t know climbed out.
After that, things moved quickly and, in retrospect, inevitably. Why I hadn’t put two and two together, I did not know, but it wasn’t until Leese was put in the back of the police car that I realized two things. One, that her father had been murdered, and two, that Leese was a prime suspect.
“I don’t understand,” I said to Julia, as we watched the police car drive away. Leese had been quiet throughout the entire episode. Now crunched up into the backseat, she was staring straight ahead.
I looked at the EMTs, who were sitting on their vehicle’s bumper. The sheriff’s deputy, a man I didn’t know, had asked them to wait to take the body away until a forensics detective arrived and cleared the scene. Judging from their slumped shoulders and crossed ankles, they were clearly bored. I thought about asking if they wanted to borrow some books, but figured they probably shouldn’t be reading on the job.
“There’s a lot about this I don’t understand,” Julia said. “But there is one thing I know for certain.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’ll figure it out.”
I shook my head. “This is beyond me.”
Julia rolled her eyes dramatically enough so that, if we’d been in a theater, the people in the back rows could have seen it. “Leese is a friend. You know she didn’t kill her dad. And you won’t let her be arrested for something she didn’t do. Ergo, if the police don’t resolve this fast, you’ll jump in where no law enforcement officer would dare to tread and risk life and limb to save your friend.”
I did my own eye roll, a very slow version. If I couldn’t match the quality, at least I could outdo her in quantity.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Julia said.
But since she was essentially right, I couldn’t.
I’d anticipated a night of fitful sleep, tossing and turning and starting awake in the middle of the night from haunted dreams of staring eyes and flashing police lights, but instead I slept like a rock from the moment my head hit the pillow to the moment my alarm went off.
Though I wasn’t sure that sleeping so soundly after the shocking events of the previous afternoon said anything positive about my character, I was pleased to wake up well rested and practically perky.
“What are you going to do today?” I asked Eddie, who was snuggled between my elbow and hip. “Hey, here’s an idea. How about if you help pack? This warm weather isn’t going to last much longer and we don’t have any real heat in here, remember?”
“Mrr,” my cat said, and, without moving a muscle, wormed his way deeper into the covers.
“Fine.” I slipped out from underneath the sheets. “Just don’t blame me if your favorite cat toys get left behind.”
In my jammies and socks, I padded across the small bedroom and into the tiny bathroom. Everything was miniaturized because our current abode was a houseboat, the cutest little houseboat imaginable, and it was our home through the warm months.
When the weather turned cold, I dragged my stack of cardboard boxes out of the storage locker that came with my boat slip rental at Uncle Chip’s Marina, packed, and hauled everything that I didn’t want to get covered with a winter’s worth of dust up to my aunt Frances’s boardinghouse.
I wasn’t sure if I truly remembered my uncle Everett, the long-dead husband of Aunt Frances, or if I just thought I remembered him from looking at old family photos. My aunt had met him in college and it was soon after he died that she’d turned the Pixley family’s summer place into what it was now.
More than once I’d been told there was an exact total of one traditional boardinghouse left in the world, the one being the place my aunt ran. I had no idea if that was accurate or not, but I did know that I loved its wide front porch, its pine-paneled living room with its fieldstone fireplace and shelves of jigsaw puzzles and board games, the massive kitchen, and the back screen porch that looked out onto a tree-filled backyard.
When I told people about my unusual living arrangements, I typically saw furrowed brows and heard murmured concerns about building equity and establishing credit. I would say something about paying off college loans, which seemed to satisfy the questioners, but the truth was I loved the winters I spent with my aunt. We were more than relatives; we were friends.
Then again, sometimes it was hard to believe that Aunt Frances and I were close blood relations. I was short; she was on the tall side. I had pale skin; she tanned easily. She was also amazingly skilled with her hands and was equally capable of building a six-panel door and of cooking a perfect lemon meringue pie. I much preferred ordering takeout over doing dishes, and still wasn’t exactly sure what a router did.
But none of that seemed to matter, because we laughed at the same things and agreed on a basic fact of life—that worrying didn’t do much good. Aunt Frances was a lot better at not worrying than I was, but I was working on being more like her.
Of course, not worrying was getting a little harder, since Aunt Frances had agreed to marry her across-the-street neighbor, the distinguished Otto Bingham. Not until next spring, she kept assuring me, but I saw no reason for them to wait and had started saying so. The stalling was starting to make me a bit nervous.
“There’s no hurry,” Otto would say.
“No?” I’d ask, arching my eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet.” After all, I was the one who’d originally shoved Otto in my aunt’s direction and I felt a degree of responsibility for the pending nuptials.
“We have a few details to work out,” my aunt would say vaguely.
“Like what?” I’d demand. “Why waste time? Just go down to the magistrate and get it done. Why are you waiting?”
My aunt would look at Otto, Otto would look at her, and they’d exchange one of those happy-couple smiles. Then they would determinedly change the subject and I’d be given the choice of being an incredible pest or letting the subject drop.
“I should start being a pest,” I told Eddie. Now showered and dressed, I was rubbing my freakishly curly hair dry with a towel. Aiming a hair dryer at my head would create a frizzy mess that could only be solved by a ponytail and a hat. “I bet I could be a really good one. After all, I’ve been getting lessons from you for a year and a half now.”
Eddie, who was on the bed in the exact same position he’d been in fifteen minutes earlier, opened one eye, then shut it.
“What was that?” I asked, doing my best to make the bed with him still flopped on top of it. “Did you say something?”